Upon acquiring this intelligence, delegates were deputed from the town of Washington to Pittsburg, where the writers of the offensive letters resided, to demand the banishment of the offenders.

A prompt obedience to this demand was unavoidable; and the inhabitants of Pittsburg, who were convened on the occasion, engaged to attend a general meeting of the people, who were to assemble the next day in Braddock's field, in order to carry into effect such further measures as might be deemed adviseable with respect to the excise and its friends.

They also determined to elect delegates to a convention which was to meet, on the 14th of August, at Parkinson's ferry.

The avowed motives to these outrages were to compel the resignation of all officers engaged in the collection of the duties on distilled spirits; to withstand by force of arms the authority of the United States; and thereby to extort a repeal of the law imposing those duties, and an alteration in the conduct of government.
Affidavits attesting this serious state of things were laid before the President.
The opposition had now reached to a point which seemed to forbid the continuance of a temporizing system.

The efforts at conciliation, which, for more than three years, the government had persisted to make, and the alterations repeatedly introduced into the act for the purpose of rendering it less exceptionable, instead of diminishing the arrogance of those who opposed their will to the sense of the nation, had drawn forth sentiments indicative of designs much deeper than the evasion of a single act.